from the dammit,-we-said-terrorists,-not-tourists! dept

So, back in March, the Washington Post published a report about the NSA's MYSTIC program, where it was recording all phone calls from an unnamed country. The Washington Post chose not to reveal that country, leading many folks to assume that it was going to be a country like Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq. Would you believe... that it was actually the Bahamas? Ryan Devereaux, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras have the long and detailed story over at The Intercept, revealing the SOMALGET program, a part of MYSTIC, which recorded every phone call from the Bahamas, not for terrorism, but to be able to hand over information about illegal drugs to the DEA.

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government. Instead, the agency appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country's cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the "full-take audio" of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month.

Other countries being targeted under MYSTIC, as revealed by the Intercept: Mexico, the Philippines and Kenya. There is also one other, unnamed, country that the US is recording all calls for, but even The Intercept won't reveal that one (noting: "specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence"). Either way, this has resulted in plenty of people pointing out that "tourists" and "terrorists" are not the same thing -- while noting that tourism is 60% of GDP in the Bahamas, with 85% of those tourists come from the US. Others have pointed out that, perhaps, the use of the Bahamas was just a convenient testbed where most people wouldn't notice, and where the information could easily be useful for the NSA's partners at the DEA. Though, on that front, Julian Sanchez points out that one of the reasons the NSA got in trouble back in the 1970s with the Church Committee, was because the government used the NSA to evade limits on domestic wiretaps for illegal drugs.

As the report notes, the purpose of SOMALGET seems to have nothing to do with stopping terrorism, but is entirely about helping the DEA in its drug war efforts. And, of course, that also explains how the US was able to set this up. Basically, the DEA has a good relationship with the government in the Bahamas, and when it needed to set up phone taps, it appears that the Bahamas more or less let them bring in their own contractors to set up the phone taps. And, rather than just set it up to tap some individuals, the NSA swooped in and helped those "contractors" tap the entire phone network because... "collect it all." Note how the "cover name" for the MYSTIC access provider is blacked out here:

The report further highlights that the DEA is one of the world's largest intelligence agencies, and often has greater access in a variety of countries, because those countries don't view it as "an intelligence agency" but rather as a drug fighting force. That has helped the NSA piggyback on the DEA for access in multiple countries.

Also, of interest, is the fact that, while the Bahamas is considered a popular place for money laundering and financial institutions to hide taxes, the NSA doesn't seem even remotely interested in that kind of law breaking. Because why bother taking on real crimes when you can focus on busting pot dealers:

Somehow, this kind of stuff doesn't make me feel any safer, as the NSA and its defenders insist. It makes me feel the opposite.

from the the-politicization-of-copyright dept

The most important development in copyright policy in the 21st century has undoubtedly been the mass politicization of copyright. In the common telling, the 2012 US SOPA and European anti-ACTA protests are when this politicization became crystal clear, lessons for the entire world that citizens can shape copyright laws and treaties.

The SOPA and ACTA stories are important, both as sources of inspiration and as how-to lessons. Which is why it's a shame that another, earlier, anti-ACTA victory is in danger of being forgotten by activists.

As you might have read on Techdirt (and as I recount in greater detail in my just-published book), between 2010 and 2011, a dozen or so underfunded Mexican activists (with a key role played by artist and Techdirt contributor Geraldine Juárez) under the label of the Mexican Stop ACTA network and leveraging social media like Twitter, convinced the Mexican Senate unanimously to reject ACTA. Specifically, the Senate, which is responsible for ratifying international treaties, told the President they would not ratify ACTA if he signed it.

Since then, in July 2012, lame-duck President Felipe Calderón actually signed ACTA, but, almost two years later, it has yet to be submitted for ratification and it's unclear whether it would pass in any case. And of greater long-term importance, the Stop ACTA debate has user rights as a legitimate part of Mexican copyright discourse.

This already-impressive outcome becomes even more remarkable when you consider the context. In 2002, the Senate voted, with little debate and almost unanimously, to extend the copyright term to a world-leading life of the author plus 100 years, which was pretty indicative of the Senate's (and the government, generally) previous hands-off, maximalist approach to copyright.

The Stop ACTA network not only engineered the Senate's unanimous rejection of ACTA, but they did it in a country generally thought to have relatively weak political institutions, an underdeveloped civil society and relatively low broadband penetration rates, on an issue traditionally negotiated behind closed doors. Most remarkably, unlike SOPA and the European ACTA protests, they did it within the political system: the system worked. As Antonio Martínez, one of the Stop ACTA leaders, told the December 2013 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, "Mexico did it first, and we did it better." He's right.

Given that Mexico's political, social and technological situation is more like other developing countries' than are those of Europe or the United States, it's worth considering how they pulled it off. Spanish speakers can check out Ciudadanos.mx: Twitter y el cambio politico en México, which includes a chapter by two of the main Stop ACTA participants, Juárez and Mart'nez. Based on interviews with many of the key players that I conducted for my book, three factors were particularly important.

The Stop ACTA activists understood and exploited the particularities of their political system, working with sympathetic, well-placed legislators. In particular, they worked with Senator Francisco Javier Castellón Fonseca, then chair of a key Senate committee, whom they knew from a previous battle over taxation of the Internet. Realizing that Mexican law requires that the Senate be kept informed of all economic-treaty negotiations, they exploited the secrecy surrounding the ACTA negotiations to convince even Senators from the President's party that they were being disrespected.

In terms of social media's political efficacy, broadband penetration rates are less important than politicians' views on the importance of social media. Legislators paid attention to Stop ACTA's Twitter presence because Barack Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign had convinced them that social media are politically relevant.

They successfully framed the ACTA question in terms of its potential violation of constitutional guarantees, such as access to information, free expression, communication, and access to education and culture. Its potential negative effect on economic development also did not go unnoticed.

Crucially, this was a made-in-Mexico movement. There might be a transnational copyright movement, but actual activism is still local. Also, while social-media technologies can make it easier to mount successful political campaigns, it's unclear whether diffuse networks like Stop ACTA have long-term staying power in protracted policy debates.

Even with those caveats, there are many lessons here for anyone interested in understanding online social movements. It suggests how citizens can leverage social media and an understanding of their domestic political regimes to effect political change. It's disappointing that this historic achievement is in danger of falling into the memory hole, even among copyright and open-Internet activists. It would be a shame if that were to happen.

telephone service, both land-line and cellular, is dominated by companies owned by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, who has grown his businesses throughout Latin America. That means Mexicans pay some of the world's highest prices for some of the spottiest phone service.

Nor is that the only sector in Mexico where business power is highly concentrated:

For years, most of Mexican television has been dominated by a single company, Televisa, the largest broadcaster in the Spanish-speaking world. (Most of the rest is controlled by another single company, TV Azteca.)

On the face of it then, a new Mexican telecoms law that aims to loosen the grip of those dominant companies should be a good thing. But increasingly people are worried that its bad elements may outweigh the good, as Global Voices explains:

Billed as an effort to break up Mexico's notorious telecommunications and broadcast monopolies, the law covers a broad range of electronic communications issues -- and treads heavily in human rights territory. At the behest of the "competent" authorities, the law authorizes telecommunications companies to "block, inhibit, or eliminate" communications services "at critical moments for public and national security." The law also authorizes Internet service providers to offer service packages that "respond to market demands" and differentiating in "capacity, speed, and quality" -- a measure that could preclude protections for net neutrality in the country. To top it off, security measures in the law would allow authorities to track user activity in real time using geolocation tools, without obtaining prior court approval.

ContingenteMX, a nonprofit collective consisting of Human Rights, environmental and social network activists and citizens, hereby demands a guarantee that the inalienable right of free Internet access -- established on the Constitution -- be clearly spelled out in Mexico’s Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law. It also requests that the constitutional citizen initiative "Internet Libre para Todos" (Free Internet For All), signed by over 223 thousand duly identified citizens and delivered to Congress in 2013 as a proposal to guarantee the right of Internet access become law.

Mexico's human rights commission has already denounced the legislation for violating basic constitutional rights including the right to privacy and freedom of expression. In the coming weeks the legislation will go before the senate and Internet freedom activists are hoping it will get voted down.

from the go-team-free-speech! dept

Perhaps two of the least liked organizations that we know of around here are ICE, also known as the Department of Homeland Security's 'Immigrations and Customs Enforcement' group -- recently subject to a sort of rebranding as Homeland Security Investigations, and GoDaddy. So here's a story of the two of them teaming up to censor a political website in Mexico that was a key site in protesting the current Mexican administration, as well as opposing attempts to criminalize protests.

On December 2nd, 2013, the site disappeared offline. The United States host, GoDaddy, suspended the domain with no prior notice. GoDaddy told its owners that the site was taken down "as part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation." The office in charge of this investigation was listed as "Special Agent Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Embassy, Mexico City." (The contact email pointed to "ice.dhs.gov," implying that this agent was working as part of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement wing, who have been involved in curious domain name takedowns in the past.)

The site has now filed a lawsuit concerning the case, saying that the takedown "violates Mexico's legal protections for freedom of expression." However, there are other questions as well, which the good folks at EFF highlight:

Why did GoDaddy take down content with the excuse of it being part of a legal investigation, when the company did not request or relay any formal judicial documents or an official court order? And why is the U.S. Embassy acting as a relay for an unclear legal process that resulted in censorship within the United States?

It would be nice to get some answers to those questions. In exploring the issue, I just sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to ICE for any communications between it and GoDaddy concerning this domain. I'll be sure to update everyone when and if any information is returned.

from the every-deportation-justifies-the-lie dept

We're used to our government's security and intelligence agencies telling lies in order to justify their actions. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has achieved a sort of infamy for his "least untruthful answer" in response to questioning. (Not that this infamy has cost him his job…) Others have performed linguistic aerobics ("not under this program," "relevant to…") to stretch the truth just enough to give their activities a thin veneer of legitimacy.

For more than two decades, Sigifredo Saldana Iracheta insisted he was a U.S. citizen, repeatedly explaining to immigration officials that he was born to an American father and a Mexican mother in a city just south of the Texas border.

Year after year, the federal government rejected his claims, deporting him at least four times and at one point detaining him for nearly two years as he sought permission to join his wife and three children in South Texas.

In rejecting Saldana's bid for citizenship, the government sought to apply an old law that cited Article 314 of the Mexican Constitution, which supposedly dealt with legitimizing out-of-wedlock births. But there was a problem: The Mexican Constitution has no such article.

NPR calls it an "error." Jeff Gamso, public defender and former criminal defense lawyer, calls it something else.

Our government's been lying to the courts about this since at least 1978 when the Immigration and Naturalization Service first invented Article 314 of the Mexican Constitution as a convenient way to deny citizenship to and thus deport American citizens.

The opinion from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals isn't as generous as NPR, either.

DHS officers and the Administrative Appeals Office (“AAO”) within DHS have relied on provisions of the Mexican Constitution that either never existed or do not say what DHS claims they say.

The DHS, however, was very generous towards its previously uninterrupted 35-year exploitation of a non-existent constitutional article.

Saldana's case was finally resolved earlier this month, when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the government's explanation of a "typo" and ruled that he had been a citizen since birth.

A "typo." That sounds familiar. The NSA used the same excuse for its collection of tons of domestic data when it claimed analysts accidentally entered US area codes rather than codes tied to foreign countries. It was a "typo," and the DHS never bothered to correct it for 35 years and then only because it was called out by a federal court.

And this isn't the only lie/error in the DHS' case. It also pointed to another article of the Mexican Constitution to deny Saldana's claims of citizenship -- Article 130. Fortunately, for the DHS, this article actually exists. Unfortunately for its hopes of barring Saldana from the country for the fifth time, what it says isn't anywhere near what is claimed.

The AAO also cited Article 130 of the Constitution of Mexico for the same proposition that the Constitution requires that parents be married in order for children to be legitimated. However, Article 130 provides only that marriage is a civil contract, as opposed to a religious one, and says nothing about legitimation or children.

Why would the government repeatedly lie in order to prosecute and deport legal US citizens? Gamso answers this question very succinctly.

Because it can.

It got away with this one for 35 years. Why should it stop? Three-and-a-half decades of reliance on a wholly fabricated article of a constitution it (correctly) assumed no one would actually bother looking up. In retrospect, it seems audacious. But the reality of the situation is that the government got away with a lie for more than three decades and that fact alone is enough to encourage it to deploy useful lies in any situation where it thinks misstating the facts will give it an edge or help it achieve its aims.

from the really-getting-serious dept

Things are moving fast with the proposed US-EU transatlantic free trade agreement (TAFTA). It was only a few weeks ago that the formal announcement was made, and already another country wants to join, as pointed out by @PostActa (original in Spanish):

The Mexican government wants to be part of the negotiations of the Transatlantic Association of Trade and Investment (TTIP, in its English acronym), which the United States and European Union will be negotiating, with the idea that there will be two blocks that make up the future pact.

That is, alongside the EU block of 27 countries, Mexico is suggesting there should be a similar regional grouping in North America. Interestingly, the story says that the Mexican government will ask the US President for permission to join, with no mention of asking the EU:

"It is a sovereign decision of Washington as to the approach and the negotiation strategy to be adopted", and although the U.S. government has already referred to the idea, it is something that is not yet included in a formal dialogue, and needs to be defined.

That suggests that the US is actively involved in this latest move -- maybe even its instigator -- and would look favorably on Mexico joining TAFTA. There's also a hint in the article quoted above that Canada too might join TAFTA. Having both Mexico and Canada on board would be consistent with the US's past approach, where it allowed them to join the TPP negotiations, but on fairly humiliating terms that limit their scope of action.

Whether or not Mexico and Canada become part of TAFTA, and under what terms, it's pretty clear what the US strategy here is. Just today we learned that South Korea is likely to join Japan in asking to sign up to the TPP talks. That would make TPP the defining international agreement for the entire Pacific region. TAFTA obviously aims to do the same for the Atlantic. As well as establishing the US as the key link between the giant TPP and TAFTA blocs, this double-headed approach would also isolate the main emerging economies -- Brazil, Russia, India and above all China -- if they refuse to join as presumably junior partners. That globe-spanning pair of trade pacts, it would seem, are what Obama hopes to be remembered for when he leaves office: his legacy to America -- and to history.

from the billion-with-a-'b' dept

We've covered stories about the Yellow Pages and other directory companies in the past, as their business and general worth appears to be just short of evaporated, but this is a strange one. Frustratingly, there is a chasm worth of unknowns in this story, and not just by us here at Techdirt, but apparently by some of the players involved. Details are scant, due to the Mexican court system not having the kind of transparency of legal documents that we have here in the States. What we do know is that the result of a mystery lawsuit by two companies against Yahoo for "breach of contract, breach of promise, and lost profits arising from contracts related to a yellow pages listings service" is that Yahoo has been ordered to pay up $2.7 Billion (yes, with a "b") dollars. While the entire case represents something of a mystery to nearly everyone commenting on it, one commonality seems to be that everyone is confused.

If the ruling stands, Yahoo would be forced to part with nearly 36% of the $7.56 billion in cash it had as of September 30. It would be one of the first major challenges faced by CEO Marissa Mayer, who took the helm at Yahoo in July.

J. P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth was similarly stumped. A research note he issued Monday focused on the ruling, around which he said there is "little clarity." It's unclear how the court came to the $2.7 billion figure for the judgment, but Anmuth said it "appears high based on the seemingly small size of Yahoo's business in Mexico."

No one really seems to know what the hell is going on here, except everyone commenting agrees that the judgment amount is insane. That said, I should also note that the judgment is not final and that Yahoo is promising to exhaust every appeal avenue afforded to them, which you'd expect given that there's over a third of their cash assets on the line. Adding to the mystery of the case is the fact that not only are court documents unavailable, but virtually nobody is commenting on the matter either.

The lawsuit was brought by Worldwide Directories S.A. de C.V. and Ideas Interactivas S.A. de C.V. against Yahoo and Yahoo de Mexico, Yahoo said.

The companies could not be reached for comment, although Carlos Bazan-Canabal, who describes himself as a founder of Worldwide Directories, told Reuters via email that he had contracted a U.S.-based law firm to handle the Yahoo case. He declined to comment further on the matter.

For what it's worth, investors don't seem to think that the massive judgment is worth selling of Yahoo shares, as of yesterday, but with so few details it's hard to know what's going on. One thing is for certain, however: if judgments like these are validated, it would be a bright signal to tech companies throughout the world to avoid doing business in Mexico.

from the live-by-IP,-die-by-IP dept

When it comes to trademark bullies, Apple is one of the more prolific muscle-flexers in the arena. For some time now, they've been known to be extremely aggressive over their trademarks. From the idea of having an apple in a company's logo, to the name of one's store for mobile applications, all the way to how you offer their products in your own company's contests, Apple defends their marks the way a jealous puppy defends a rawhide.

That's why, while we may agree that aggressive trademark enforcement is at times overblown and unnecessary, it's really rather fun to watch Apple have the trademark stick wrestled from their grips and get beaten over the head with it, such as when Mexico invalidates their use of the "iPhone" mark in commerce within their country. And just in time for Christmas, too! The following is a wonderful story about how a Mexican telecom company already had a mark for iFone, but even more interesting is the long history Apple has of arrogantly bullying everyone else over their attempt to validate the iPhone mark.

The Mexican company registered the trademark iFone way back in 2003, full four years before Apple filed to trademark the name iPhone (which was already owned by Linksys in US, more about that later). Apple, despite fully aware of the fact that the Mexican company owned the trademark since 2004, sued them in 2009 to invalidate the iFone trademark. So Apple wanted iFone brand to be invalidated, which was filed in 2004, because it was similar to iPhone name which was filed in 2007.

Apparently, Apple's argument for invalidating the pre-existing iFone mark in Mexico went something along the lines of, "Hey, we're Apple." This, as the article goes on to note, is something Apple did that adds to their longstanding history of not giving a damn about anyone else's trademarks. You may recall that the iPhone mark was originally owned in the US by Cisco, who settled with Apple on use of the mark. But back to iFone.

It turns out that the Mexican courts were understandably unimpressed with Apple's possibly trademarked "Hey, we're Apple" legal argument. They upheld the iFone mark and now Apple can't use the iPhone term inside of Mexico.

It means a lot of trouble for "sue first talk later" Apple which is engaged in dozens of lawsuits around the world. This decision will have a huge impact on Apple's market in Mexico and they now won't be able to use the name iPhone in the country - this decision coming before the holiday season is nothing short of A Nightmare At The Mexico City for Apple.

Apple needs to hold its horses back. It needs to stop its "sue everyone else" drive as it has started to come back and bite them.

Which is the problem with lawsuit-happy companies like Apple. They escalate the war to the point where their own extremism is met with opposite extremism to combat it. Is this whole trademark nonsense necessary? Probably not. I can't claim to be an expert on how the average Mexican citizen associates something that says iFone with Apple, but I'm guessing they're smart and in-tune with technology enough that they know the two aren't related. I could be wrong about that, but there's one thing I'm not wrong about.

It's immensely entertaining to see aggressive IP folks get bit in the ass by their own tactics.

from the not-easily-convinced dept

As we noted recently, Mexico's executive branch surprised a lot of people recently by having its ambassador to Japan sign ACTA (just as people were claiming that ACTA was dead in the country). Of course, this came after the Congress had very specifically called for the Mexican President to reject ACTA (long before other countries and the EU Parliament began realizing ACTA was a problem). As we noted, Mexico's IP Office has been telling people that it's sure that it can convince the Mexican Congress to come around to supporting ACTA.

The Senate resolution, sponsored by Sens. Francisco Javier Castellon Fonseca, Carlos Sotelo Garcia, Maria Beatriz Zavala Peniche, and Dip. Rodrigo Perez-Alonso Gonzale rejects the signing because it didn’t respect Mexican law on the approval of international economic treaties; it ignored the official Senate recommendation of September 6, 2011; and it violated domestic law and human rights. This resolution asks the President to take the steps necessary to revoke Mexico's signature from the agreement, and it asks the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare a report on the reasoning behind the signing of the agreement.

The Chamber of Deputies resolution, sponsored by Dep. Jaime Aguilar Alvarez rejects ACTA and calls the executive's disregard of the legislature on this matter an “authoritarian and unilateral stance.”

It does not look like the Congress is going to be convinced to support the ratification of ACTA any time soon.

"Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, has taken a keen interest in Mexico, where more than 47,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against the cartels in 2006. Schmidt recently visited most of Mexico's most violent cities, Ciudad Juarez, where civic leaders asked if he could help.

"Defeated, helpless, these people have been so hardened in their experience with cartels that they have lost battles and they have lost hope," Schmidt told a conference on international crime this week. "They were looking for a universal hammer to protect them. For me the answer was obvious. It was technology.""

At the conference in California, put on by both Google and the Council on Foreign Relations, a variety of ways technology and Google could help the Mexican authorities tackle their drug cartel problem were discussed. Some of the strategies may raise eyebrows for privacy-minded citizens of any country: sharing real-time intelligence with police, identifying through Google's data how individuals are connected with one another, and even showing links between criminals or corrupt politicians and potentially implicated bank accounts.

But, in my mind, the real winning ideas probably won't raise any of those privacy concerns: creating an anonymous network through which anyone can report drug cartel information or activity, so as to avoid reprisal, and creating community web platforms so citizens can share information about the criminals and publicly chastise them.

If I had to guess, that's where you're going to have the most success. Using technology to empower the police can be a good thing, but using technology to empower the citizenry, that's how you can really have an impact.

Of course, it will take more than Google's help to take down drug cartels, something Eric Schmidt recognizes:

""I think at the end of the day, there really are bad people, and you have to go in and arrest them and kill them," he said."

Still, empowering the Mexican people with technology should produce a step forward in the fight against the drug cartels, and that's a good thing.